The greatest challenge any CEO faces with a new business strategy is getting traction. In terms of developing an engagement and change strategy, determing strategies for how to deal with leaders that publicly support the change but in reality don't is the first issue you need to deal with.
Here are some reasons organizations fail to get traction with leaders and employees on business strategy and what to do about it. 1. A divided leadership team 2. Launch with huge fan fare then no messages on actual updates or achievement 3. Change fatigue - organizations that appear to constantly change direction 4. Organization has a poor track record in successfully sustaining change 5. Waiting too long to implement employee engagement strategies
So let's tackle each point and identify some things we can do as employee engagement specialists to minimize the impact of these impediments to successfully implementing change.
Disunity in the team It is very obvious that a successful adaptation of a new business strategy depends on how leaders respond to it. A quick session that involves the team could be done in order to show them that successful implementation highly depends on common acceptance. They also need to be briefed on their part on making employees part of the organizational change process. The most important message that the leadership team must understand is that they must present a unified front in front of employees and that they are one with the changes although individual sentiments could be different. As an outcome to the briefing, they must commit themselves fully to bring about organizational change and messages they have to communicate to their teams in order to engage them.
Commencing change with a big bang but after that no monitoring of successes or updates are made As a change specialist you should be able to persuade the Chief Executive Office and the company's management team that your change management strategy is essential. Initially they will absolutely support the change and suggest that big events and communications strategies be done to inform the staff of the new business strategy. But it is most likely that between the day that the first measurable achievement of the change strategy and the launch of it will be lengthy which decreases the momentum it first had and eventually convinces staff that the change will probably not happen. You have to properly engage employees and persuade them that change is at hand but losing your credibility as a team of leaders poses high risks to success. One effective way to persuade employees that there is momentum to create a timeline and milestones that clearly indicate where you are and where you need to get to which will definitely have the team of leaders realize how important it is to engage employees to overcome obstacles in between.
Change fatigue - organizations that appear to constantly change direction Leaders and employees become increasingly disengaged when they do not understand why the organization seems to continue to change direction on business strategy without giving the prior change strategy enough time to work. Often these are not new strategies but enhancements or the next progression of the original business strategy. When developing your employee engagement strategy you need to establish the links between each business strategy and be able to demonstrate to leaders and employees what these links are. The best way to do this is to design activities that engage employees in the process of change as it relates to them. There are many change strategies that you can implement that are focussed on activities that will ensure leaders and employees will finally say, "Aha, now I get it!"
Poor track record in sustaining organizational change When the organization becomes known for its inability to sustain a new business initiative this gets ingrained in the employees' memories giving them more reasons for not involving themselves in the business strategy. To overcome this hurdle, specific data and information about how the new initiative is different from previous ones should be delivered and reverting to previous behaviour is not possible. Real examples that demonstrate the benefits of the new strategy must be communicated to employees through effective leadership communication at implementation and reasons why previous change attempts could not be sustained need to be explained.
Strategies to involve employees involved took a long time to implement If the move to involve individual employees and their leaders in the new business strategy takes a long time to happen there is a big risk in losing traction in its adoption. Together with any discussion on proposed change management in business strategies is the involvement of an employee engagement expert so that they understand timeframes and milestones. This is required in order to develop effective approaches not only in delivering important messages but also in creating effective strategies that are focused on individual employees and how such change management affects their performance. By planning how employees become meaningfully involved in the implementation of a new strategy instead of focusing on delivering sound bytes there is a very good chance that the individual develops a sense of ownership from the very start.
Whenever an organization embarks on a new business strategy, whether for a division or the whole of organization, and this includes government departments, leaders and employees react in exactly the same way. There will be those groups that support the new strategy even without all the facts at hand, those that preach the mantra, "it will never happen" and those that won't support the strategy until they see some commitment and evidence that it will happen. The challenge for transformational leaders is to focus on the leadership team first and develop a strategy to deal with each of these three groups.
Here are some reasons organizations fail to get traction with leaders and employees on business strategy and what to do about it. 1. A divided leadership team 2. Launch with huge fan fare then no messages on actual updates or achievement 3. Change fatigue - organizations that appear to constantly change direction 4. Organization has a poor track record in successfully sustaining change 5. Waiting too long to implement employee engagement strategies
So let's tackle each point and identify some things we can do as employee engagement specialists to minimize the impact of these impediments to successfully implementing change.
Disunity in the team It is very obvious that a successful adaptation of a new business strategy depends on how leaders respond to it. A quick session that involves the team could be done in order to show them that successful implementation highly depends on common acceptance. They also need to be briefed on their part on making employees part of the organizational change process. The most important message that the leadership team must understand is that they must present a unified front in front of employees and that they are one with the changes although individual sentiments could be different. As an outcome to the briefing, they must commit themselves fully to bring about organizational change and messages they have to communicate to their teams in order to engage them.
Commencing change with a big bang but after that no monitoring of successes or updates are made As a change specialist you should be able to persuade the Chief Executive Office and the company's management team that your change management strategy is essential. Initially they will absolutely support the change and suggest that big events and communications strategies be done to inform the staff of the new business strategy. But it is most likely that between the day that the first measurable achievement of the change strategy and the launch of it will be lengthy which decreases the momentum it first had and eventually convinces staff that the change will probably not happen. You have to properly engage employees and persuade them that change is at hand but losing your credibility as a team of leaders poses high risks to success. One effective way to persuade employees that there is momentum to create a timeline and milestones that clearly indicate where you are and where you need to get to which will definitely have the team of leaders realize how important it is to engage employees to overcome obstacles in between.
Change fatigue - organizations that appear to constantly change direction Leaders and employees become increasingly disengaged when they do not understand why the organization seems to continue to change direction on business strategy without giving the prior change strategy enough time to work. Often these are not new strategies but enhancements or the next progression of the original business strategy. When developing your employee engagement strategy you need to establish the links between each business strategy and be able to demonstrate to leaders and employees what these links are. The best way to do this is to design activities that engage employees in the process of change as it relates to them. There are many change strategies that you can implement that are focussed on activities that will ensure leaders and employees will finally say, "Aha, now I get it!"
Poor track record in sustaining organizational change When the organization becomes known for its inability to sustain a new business initiative this gets ingrained in the employees' memories giving them more reasons for not involving themselves in the business strategy. To overcome this hurdle, specific data and information about how the new initiative is different from previous ones should be delivered and reverting to previous behaviour is not possible. Real examples that demonstrate the benefits of the new strategy must be communicated to employees through effective leadership communication at implementation and reasons why previous change attempts could not be sustained need to be explained.
Strategies to involve employees involved took a long time to implement If the move to involve individual employees and their leaders in the new business strategy takes a long time to happen there is a big risk in losing traction in its adoption. Together with any discussion on proposed change management in business strategies is the involvement of an employee engagement expert so that they understand timeframes and milestones. This is required in order to develop effective approaches not only in delivering important messages but also in creating effective strategies that are focused on individual employees and how such change management affects their performance. By planning how employees become meaningfully involved in the implementation of a new strategy instead of focusing on delivering sound bytes there is a very good chance that the individual develops a sense of ownership from the very start.
Whenever an organization embarks on a new business strategy, whether for a division or the whole of organization, and this includes government departments, leaders and employees react in exactly the same way. There will be those groups that support the new strategy even without all the facts at hand, those that preach the mantra, "it will never happen" and those that won't support the strategy until they see some commitment and evidence that it will happen. The challenge for transformational leaders is to focus on the leadership team first and develop a strategy to deal with each of these three groups.
About the Author:
Marcia Xenitelis is a recognized authority on the subject on transformational leadership and change management and has spoken at conferences around the world. For access to case studies and more information on the types of strategies you can implement to engage employees visit www.transformational-leadership.com for a wealth of free informative articles and resources.
